


My One and Only Shot

by Fangirlingmanaged



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Getting Back Together, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Hurt Tony Stark, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Past Domestic Violence, Post-Break Up, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 04:49:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20501153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fangirlingmanaged/pseuds/Fangirlingmanaged
Summary: Once upon a time, Steve broke up with Tony because he thought it was the right thing to do. Tony would soar high and far, and he didn't need Steve to drag him down. So he did the only thing he could, and let him go even though it hurt more than anything else.Years down the line, an older Steve realizes that letting Tony go might have been the worst mistake of his life. A breakup is more than just one, and what right did he have to think he would be the only one hurting? A chance encounter with his once lover puts things into perspective.





	My One and Only Shot

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the song "What if I Never Get Over You" by Lady Antebellum
> 
> It feels As though I’ve been working on this fic for the better part of 6 months. I lost my will to write for a good bit. I miss Tony, but it wasn't Even about that. I’m really proud to have finished this one :)

Steve manages to tell himself that it’s all for their own good. They’re young, Tony especially, and with the plans already laid out for them both he doesn’t see a way for them to last the year much less the rest of their lives. He talks himself out of his conviction numerous times, refuses to acknowledge Bucky and Sam when they ask what’s plaguing him, and the one time Tony had asked, hands fidgeting, he had blown up on the other young man which had eventually proven what he had been telling himself for months. This was for the best; for the both of them.

Tony has big shoes to fill what with his father’s company and the start-up he’s been talking about since their very first conversation together. For any other nineteen year old Bostonian those might be pipe dreams, but Steve knows that with or without Howard Stark’s name to back him up, Tony will do whatever he sets himself out to do. That is another reason why Steve convinces himself to do what he does.

Steve is a nobody from Brooklyn who had managed to scrounge up a scholarship with his doodles and no guaranteed of good living after his degree. His days of comfort are numbered; there is _nothing_ he can offer Tony. He had barely been able to offer his body to the genius, and nothing had made him more thankful for his growth spur before moving to Boston than getting to have Tony in his arms. Only, a small part of his brain that still appears to be working tells him, Tony would have loved him with or without the hundred pounds of muscle. Steve knows this, Tony has told him this numerous times, and yet his self-hatred convinces him otherwise.

So that’s what leads them here, on a cold late-November night in front of Tony’s apartment right before Christmas break. They had made plans, months ago, to spend the break together at Tony’s Manhattan condo as a trial run for… well, it’s all moot now.

“I don’t understand,” Tony says now, his brown eyes wide and his eyelashes casting shadows over his cheeks from the street lamp. Just a minute ago he had been smiling, his warm mittened hand holding tightly onto Steve’s, and yet here he is.

Steve winces internally, but forces himself not to show the other boy anything. Tony knows how to read him too well now, but whatever internal conflict he’s having appears to be keeping him from pointing out Steve’s shitty attempt at nonchalance. Steve feels relieved. Then hates himself for feeling relieved; for causing Tony this much pain. _It’s for the best_, he chants to himself in his head.

“I just—“Steve swallows and drops his eyes from his boy—well, ex-boyfriend’s face. He shrugs, stalling for time, while the voice in the back of his head that sounds suspiciously like Bucky tells him that he still has time. Being the stubborn ass that he is, Steve forces the words out his mouth. “I don’t think this is working anymore, Tony.”

“This?” Tony repeats, numbly, and Steve knows he’s not asking for clarification. Tony is a genius, he knows exactly what the other man is telling him, but he needs the time. His brain, his goddamn wonderful brain, going trillions of miles a minute to formulate a plan.

“Us,” Steve says, adding salt to the wound with a clarification they both know is unnecessary. He feels cruel, with the other boy’s full body wince, and the way he takes a step back. _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I love you, I know I never told you but I’m doing this for you. I swear that I am. _“I’m—” he takes a deep breath, squares his shoulders the way they told him to in training, and meets Tony’s eyes. Then falters.

_He’s crying. _

Tony has never cried in the whole year and a half they have been together. Not once. Not when his butler/dad figure had been sick. Not that horrible spring break with Mr. Stark in the house. Not after his god-knows-how-many kidnappings. Not once. And here he is, tears pulling in his eyes and clumping in his eyelashes in the frigid winter air. Steve wants to double over with the pain that hits his chest, but he can’t. He _can’t_.

“Look, Tony, I think we both knew this might not work. We both knew from the start that—that we were too different. I’m leaving at the end of the next year, and you’re going to send me god knows where. I just—I don’t think we should be wasting—“The way Tony rears back at his choice of words immediately makes Steve feel like the worst human being on Earth. He wants to kick himself the moment the words are out, but Tony beats him to it. He takes a step back, then another, tear after tear falling silently down his cheeks.

“Wasting each other’s time, huh?” Tony brings his arm up to his face stiffly, like DUM-E did before Tony updated him, and wipes at his cheeks. “I guess that tells me how much this meant to you.” And then it happens, Steve has seen him do this so many times. Has hated each and every time he has to put on the mask and fake indifference. It burns like acid on his skin to know he put that mask there and there is nothing he can do to fix it. “Okay, Steve. I understand.”

“Tony,” Steve starts, but there are no words. He had made his choice to let Tony go, to let him fly as high as his brain could get him, and now he has to stick to the consequences.

“It—it’s all right, Steve, like you said we both knew this was coming,” Tony bites his lip, takes a shuttering breath, and then looks up at Steve. He’s trying so hard, Steve can tell, not to cry. It breaks his heart in two. “I just—”Tony looks away, over Steve’s shoulder and then seems to come to a decision. “I just hope you know that I love you,” the breath leaves his lungs and the young genius gives a sad little chuckle. “I love you,” he repeats, his voice steady. “And you made me happy. And I’m sorry that wasn’t enough for you.”

Steve feels his throat closing at the words, his eyes stinging with the effort it takes to not cry in front of Tony; that is at least one cruelty he can spare him. He already feels like an ass for breaking his heart; he doesn’t need to put more doubts in his head. Still, he opens his mouth but no words come out.

“It’s all right, Steve, you don’t have to say anything. I just—”Tony swallows a sound like a sob, and shoves his hands deep into his pockets as he shrugs. “I don’t know; I just had to tell you, I guess. In case—what if—what if I never get to tell anyone else, you know?”

Steve can’t say anything, and with one last long look at him and a trembling smile, Tony turns around and walks into his apartment leaving Steve in the barely-falling snow.

He stands there for a long time, uncaring of the cold or the dark, as he looks down at his shoes. Long after the last of the cars have stopped passing by. Long after the light on the front porch turns off. Eventually he knows he has to go, Tony might look out and see him and that’s certainly the last thing he needs.

_Someone will love you, baby. Someone braver and better than me will love you so fucking fiercely. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I couldn’t be the man you deserved, _is the last thing he thinks before doing an about face and heading back home.

He turns his eyes up at the sky, curses everything that led him to this moment, and finally lets the tears fall.

***

Bucky doesn’t speak to him for two whole weeks, after. When he had turned back to their apartment, crying and shaking and barely coherent, his best friend had assumed something had happened to Tony. Him and Sam had been cuddling on the sofa when Steve had stumbled in with a vacant look in his eyes. After sitting him down and warming him up, Bucky had started with the questions. Eventually, Steve had managed to tell them what had happened.

“I’ll kill him,” Bucky hisses, gearing up towards the door. Sam had grabbed his arm and pulled him back onto the couch. When the other man had insisted on going, Sam had only needed to send him a glare for him to calm down.

“It wasn’t his fault,” Steve had said duly, eyes trained on the carpet at his feet. He knew Bucky’s sympathy wouldn’t last for long once he told the truth.

“What happened?” Sam asked him gently ever the best at handling emotional situations like this. “You guys were fine, I thought. You looked happy.”

_I love you, and you made me happy_.

Steve lets out a sob and drops his head in his hands, elbows on his knees. He feels like he’s crumbling from the inside and he doesn’t know how to control the pain. He can’t tell them. He can’t. They won’t understand.

“What happened?!” Bucky explodes after a while, concern and anger in his tone. “What did that bastard do to you?! Steve, I swear I’ll kill him!”

“James!” Sam chastises lowly, his voice tight. “This is not helping!”

“I don’t give a _fuck_, Sam! That bastard hurt my best friend! I told him what would happen, I warned him—”

“It wasn’t him!” Steve screams, fingers grasping his hair tightly. He clenches his eyes shut and rocks himself back and forth. “I broke up with him. Just now. _Me_. I told him that we weren’t working. I told him that we both knew—” he can’t say more. Just the thought of the words he had told Tony makes him want to throw up.

There is a long beat of stunned silence in the room as the words settle between them. He hears Sam’s sharp intake of breath. Hears the couch creak as Bucky leans back onto it like his strings had been cut all at once.

“You stupid bastard,” there’s rage in Bucky’s voice like nothing he’s ever heard before. It makes his eyes snap up to look at his best friend, and the glare in his eyes makes him rear back in shock. Bucky has never directed that much anger at him before.

“Bucky!” Sam says in as much shock as Steve.

“No, fuck this bullshit, Sam! This was a mistake. You know it. I know it. I’m not gonna sugar coat it. You fucked up,” he looks directly at Steve as he says it, and blows out a disgusted breath. After a moment of looking at each other, Bucky gets up and makes his way to the front door.

“Where are you going?” Steve recognizes his voice even though it sounds hoarse.

“To check on my friend,” he says, voice cold. His coat isn’t even on before the door is slamming shut with enough force to rattle the walls.

Steve is left to stare at the door where his best friend since Kindergarten has just walked out of to comfort someone else. He doesn’t know what he feels, in that moment, but he will soon enough. Bucky has been with him for so many things, and the fact that he’s _so_ angry says enough. Sam’s silence says the rest.

***

Steve is home on a rare day off when the news break. Sam and Bucky are out on a date, finally able to relax after the last of their exams are done and their job schedules have coincided. It’s good, their happiness, it lifts a miniscule part of the weight Steve has been carrying for the past couple of weeks. He hasn’t left the house, not really, in those two weeks. He called in sick to both his jobs during the three days after his epic fuck up with Tony; luckily, Fury and Phillips were understanding despite their grouchiness. It probably helped that Steve has never failed to show up to any of his shifts, has stayed extra time when his help was needed, and had never taken a single sick or vacation day for himself.

He had hoped that the rest would help, no school or work to worry about, but the time off had only left him feeling like a caged animal. There’s nowhere on campus that he can go without risking seeing Tony or one of his friends. The thought alone of what Rhodes or Hogan might do to him if they see him makes him cringe. He knows he should feel ashamed of his cowardice, but the constant heartbreak tends to numb everything else. Being in the apartment isn’t much better, either. Bucky might not still be ignoring his existence, like he did the first week, but he’s still so incredibly angry.

Steve doesn’t know what he and Tony talked about, the state his best friend might have found the young genius in, but he can surmise enough to guess that it was bad. Bucky’s eyes had been red rimmed, and he looked pale when he came back. There was a stain on one of his sleeves that was turning copper and crusty and Steve’s heart had hammered so hard in his chest as he asked Bucky where the blood had come from. Bucky had answered _Sam’s_ questions just fine, but he refused to even look at Steve. He couldn’t even be upset enough to say that he didn’t understand why his friend was so upset. Tony might not have known him for long, they had been together a little over a year, but Bucky and Tony had gotten along like a house on fire from the start. Steve had thought there would be some animosity there; Bucky was protective and Tony was so, so insecure sometimes and Steve’s relationship with his best friend was anything but conventional. His fears had been unfounded, however, as Tony’s naturally shy nature had had Bucky’s protective instincts flaring. It had been a good friendship, and Steve hates himself for putting both of them in the position they’re in.

So when his friends come crashing into the apartment that day, December 16th, he doesn’t think he’s ever going to forget. Sam is pulling Bucky into the apartment, neither one of them bothering to take off their layers or even their shoes, as they trudge in and make a straight line for the living room. Steve’s worry spikes as soon as they make their noisy entrance; Bucky is on the phone, but not speaking, and Sam’s face is set into a worried frown.

“what’s going on?” Steve asks Sam, knowing better than to speak to Bucky seeing as their relationship is so messy at the moment.

Sam throws a look filled with pity his way before he looks back at the television. “You might want to sit down, Steve.”

“…_just this afternoon. Sources at Stark Industries tell us that Mr. and Mrs. Stark were on their way to their yearly Christmas vacation—”_

_“… car might have hit a snow bank which caused Howard Stark to lose control—”_

_“… killed on impact…”_

_“… Stark is said to still be at their family home, no word…”_

_“… orphaned…”_

_“… is said to take the reigns of the company now…”_

“Tony, come on!” Bucky’s scream breaks Steve from his stupor. He feels his head turn numbly to look at his best friend as he disconnects the call and then immediately begins dialing the number again. “come on, you stupid kid. Come on, you just have to answer. Come _on!”_

This goes on for another hour or so. Bucky is stubborn, they all know it, and he doesn’t let up even when Sam tries to coax him away from the phone. His hands are shaking, and he snaps at his own boyfriend to leave him alone. He keeps saying that he _has_ to make sure the young genius is okay, but he doesn’t explain further.

Steve feels as though he has checked out completely.

***

Tony never answers the phone. Bucky tries and tries and tries, for weeks, but eventually the operator’s voice tells him the number has been disconnected. Bucky doesn’t give up for a while, though, he goes back to New York one weekend and doesn’t tell Steve. Sam is the one that sits with him waiting for news. Bucky calls once to say he’s trying, but by Monday he’s back and locks himself into his room.

Tony isn’t home anymore. The mansion is locked up and dark and nobody will tell him anything about where he might be. A tall gentleman had asked him if his name was Steve, and when Bucky said he knew him the man had asked him, coldly yet polite, to stop calling. Master Stark had enough grief to deal with at the moment.

_Grief. _Because the world hadn’t seen it fit enough to just give him the heartache that Steve caused. No, it had to take more too.

Steve stays silent, listening, trying to keep his hands from shaking. Bucky tells them all of this in a flat voice, but they all know that he’s feeling his heart breaking over this too. Tony hadn’t only been his, Steve knows, he had wormed himself into their little tight knit trio and now they all felt his absence like an open wound.

Still, they listen. Steve knows that Jarvis, because who else could tell Bucky that? Would not have sent his friend away if he didn’t think it was the best thing for Tony. Even though it kills him inside, even though all he wants to do is beg Tony’s forgiveness, he knows that the only thing he can do is give Tony time and space to grieve in peace.

Tony had loved him, fiercely, and now he had to mourn his loss.

***

Tony falls apart in increments after his parents’ death. Steve, and Bucky and Sam and the rest of the world, get a prime view seat to his decline. It starts slowly, with things that aren’t surprising to see in regards to Tony. He shows up drunk, swaying on his feet, at his parents’ televised memorial. He’s wearing dark tinted glasses, and Steve knows that this is a defense tactic. Tony had confided in him once.

It gets worse from there, and even though weeks and months and years pass, the tide of grief doesn’t abate for Steve. He knows, logically, that he can’t blame himself for the choices Tony is making. How he chooses to deal with his emotions. Yet pain and heartbreak aren’t logical, and in the darkest hours of the night when he can’t sleep and Sam isn’t there to talk him off the ledge he asks himself what he would do if Tony made as choice he couldn’t take back. He wonders who is there to keep Tony from his.

***

Two years after their breakup, Tony is hospitalized under mysterious circumstances. Steve had had the near heart attack of one of his kidnappings three months prior, then another year and a half before that, and then right after their split. Those had always been scrutinized by the news and gossip rags. Those times there had been plenty of information and multiple SI press releases. It never got easier; Steve was still as terrified on the latest one as he had been the first time. In his darkest, most selfish moments, he’s incredibly grateful they had never happened when they were dating. He doesn’t know how they might have dealt with that.

So the secrecy is new, and it sits heavily in Steve’s gut. Bucky had been the first one to point it out one night when he and Sam had come over to Steve’s new dwellings. The apartment by Fort Green Park wasn’t big, to say the least, but it had been within his budget and there was decent enough lighting and inspiration for him to do his art (professionally and his freelance work.) Both of them had given Steve pitying looks when he tried to explain his reasons for moving, citing their budding relationship and need for privacy, but he knew they weren’t fooled. He was never any good at lying to himself.

Still, they were his best friends and they made it work. They have weekly movie nights, and morning runs and coffee meet-ups when they could. None of them admitted that it was a way for Steve to try to get his life back in order. Two years after the breakup with Tony, Steve had tried his hand at dating. Sharon had been the furthest thing to Tony he could have chosen. She was a no-nonsense woman working for the local police department, making her way up to be a detective, and Steve had been intrigued from the moment he accidentally bumped into her at the supermarket on his way to movie night.

He had surprised himself by asking for her number, and for a few weeks he had convinced himself that it was what he wanted. She was loving and sweet, and she made him feel a little less out of breath. They could go on movie dates, and she wouldn’t make comments that would make Steve snort inappropriately or get them kicked out. They could go out to dinner and not drop a pretty penny on dessert. She never called him in the middle of the night for a walk or a picnic or a trip to the other side of the city. He could say he didn’t want to talk about something and she would give him his space.

He should have been happy with her, but seven weeks after they started dating she had stayed the night for the first time. Steve doesn’t dare to ask himself why it took him that long, but in the morning when he’d woken up with strands of her blond hair in his mouth and her arm thrown around his middle he had felt his skin crawl at the sensation. He’d tried his very best not to wake her up as he all but bolted to the bathroom. Needless to say, his relationship had deteriorated from then on. When he told his friends this Sam had been sympathetic, told him it might not be time yet and that that was fine. Bucky had left the room.

It wasn’t until after their breakup that he realized he’d never bothered to find a time for his girlfriend and his friends to meet. So now he just hung out with his friends, went on morning runs around the park and tried to find his footing again. He checks up on Tony through the news occasionally, knows when he might be okay and when he might not. Forces himself not to google him when he sees another gossip rag talking about his sex life. Tries his hardest to make himself believe he made the right choice.

Then Tiberius fucking Stone happens, and Steve has to try his best to not go off the rails. Tony’s stay at the hospital, apparently, was just the tip of a long-coming iceberg. When he gets out of medical care, because of the secrecy SI maintained or because the news just loved to shit talk him, he is swarmed by reporters. He’s wearing sunglasses, but there’s a dark purple bruise that’s still visible despite them. His arm is in a cast, and when he walks out the doors holding on to Rhodey’s arm, he hunches in on himself as though his ribs pain him.

The kicker, what makes Steve get a red haze in his vision and Bucky snarl under his breath, are the bruises on his throat. They look too much like fingerprints for anyone to mistake them for anything but what they are. When he gets a microphone shoved in his face, Tony smiles the loose grin of someone high on painkillers and throws a one liner before Rhodey shuffles him towards the waiting car. Tony, loose limbed, grin on his split lips and bruised body gives a jaunty little wave at the cameras and then he’s gone.

***

Tiberius goes to trial, but he doesn’t go to prison for what he’s done. He walks out of the courtroom like a fucking movie star holding the hand of some blond super-model girl and waving exuberantly at the camera. He gets to call Tony all manner of dirty lies and ugly names, and gets away with it. He’s exonerated after a video is suspiciously given to the court at the last minute wherein Tony supposedly leaves the room after their nightly activities. Tony can’t contest it because, under the influence of alcohol and god knows what else, he’s lost a good chunk of time.

Steve grits his teeth at what the supposed reporters say about him. Sam and Bucky try their best to turn the channel when they’re around but that still doesn’t keep him from obsessing over what the other man is doing. He knows that Tony moves away to California to take over his family’s business, sees the cover on Times and every other magazine of him posing with his godfather. Even through the makeup and the lighting, Steve thinks he looks exhausted.

Four weeks after Stone’s bailout and his move, the gossip is turned to Tony once again. It had just started to wind down, but then the vultures were on him again. They have grainy footage of him doing jelly shots off a model at some night club, and then the splash of what apparently passes as news nowadays.

At twenty one, exactly on the anniversary of his parents’ death, Tony Stark overdoses on opioids and ends up right back at the hospital. He goes right into rehab, supposedly at the insistence of his “close friends” and stays there for three months. The reporters say it’s tragic. Call him wild and irresponsible; accuse him of wasting his life. Nobody bothers to check the date it happens.

***

The next three years, Steve gets an internship in London as a curator. He takes it as a way to leave his past behind and maybe get some distance from his current obsession. Though his days had stayed much the same as at the beginning, Steve has found what he considers a healthy middle ground. He still has bad days when he thinks of his old lover and a pain so intense hits him that all he can do is take a moment to breathe through it. He still avoids Manhattan unless he absolutely has to, the last year especially after rumors of the genius’s return start to circulate, and everything else that might remind him of his loss.

He keeps track of the other man. Sends a pray to a God he doesn’t even know he believes in every time Tony does something to his health. There’s been more rehab stunts since then. A couple suicide attempts that had been almost enough to send Steve running, consequences be damned. Nobody says anything about Jarvis, the press aren’t interested in the employees, but he had been there holding onto Tony every time after one of his stays. He’s gone when Tony shuffles into the public again, and that is enough for Steve to know that the last of Tony’s family is gone.

The press is juvenile and downright cruel when reporting about it. Certain websites make a game out of it; trying to guess why Tony isn’t in public anymore. Steve tends to only half-listen, now, only keeping tabs on when Tony is and isn’t in the public eye. He hates hearing the taunts and the insults; the speculation of what kind of substance Tony is taking now to numb the pain. The cruel and careless way his suicide attempts are reported. The fake sympathy and belated words of support. The stoic way with which Stane goes in front of the press, looking more careless and irritated with each conference, and his subtle jabs about his own godson.

So Steve does what he has proven himself to be very apt at, and he runs. All the way across the pond and keeping only the bare minimum news on his former lover. Just enough to reassure himself that even though they might be together anymore, right here in this universe, Tony still exists.

***

Steve is having a good enough life in London, five years after, when the unthinkable happens. He’s managed to make a few friends, Xavier and his maybe-husband Erik who are professors at some institute in New York but spend a lot of time in England. A sometimes air-headed guy named Brian Braddock who is, frankly, hilarious and reminds him a little of his best friend. And then, of course, there’s Peggy.

She’d been a godsend for him when he’d just moved to London; a director at the museum he was interning with and a no nonsense woman who had told him in no uncertain terms that she had no time for amateurs as soon as they’d met. Steve, never one to resist strong, independent, loud-mouthed brunettes, had been lost from the start. She produced in him a type of awe and adoration he had only ever felt once before. She was strong-willed and driven but also very funny and one of the most caring people he could have ever met. Steve had been too afraid to even say more than a quiet hello to her for the first few months of his new life, but then she had found him and asked him if he had anything against inviting a gal out for dinner.

It had been the beginning of a beautiful friendship since then. They had been going on early morning coffee runs before their time at the museum and the occasional dinner after. Steve found himself being able to confide everything in Peggy; how much he missed his life and his friends, how lost he felt in his new life sometimes, how hopeless he felt about his future. Peggy didn’t let him wallow in self-pity for long and she was always good for giving him a good kick on the ass sometimes. Steve had talked himself out of asking her to go steady with him so many times that he was beginning to want to kick himself.

Then, two years after their meeting, after some of the staff had gone out to a local pub to celebrate one Friday night, he had finally managed to get the courage to kiss her. It had been a good kiss, surely, nothing like the few dispassionate kisses he once shared with Sharon. Peggy had been pliant and comforting and warm when he leaned in to plant one her, and for a moment Steve had been able to imagine doing this for the foreseeable future, if not the rest of his life. Then, the hand that he had thought was placed on his chest to bring him closer pushed him away and he met the eyes of a flushed-faced, wide eyed Peggy Carter.

“I’m so sorry, Peggy,” he’d breathed out. His training on consent and sexual harassment immediately kicking in. he should have asked first, damn it. “I should have asked if you were all right with me kissing you. It’s just—I’ve been—I just mean, I—”

“Steve,” she’d said, accent thick with exasperation and amusement as she rolled her eyes at him. “It’s quite all right. I’m not about to cite you for harassment with anyone. It wasn’t even a bad kiss,” she’d said this with a cheeky grin, and Steve had flushed with embarrassment. “And, if the circumstances were different, I wouldn’t have minded. It’s just—“she’d bit her lip and looked away.

“Just?” he asked, hand darting forward to hold hers. She stared down at their hand, his so much bigger than her delicate fingers, and smiled sadly. The hope that had stirred in Steve’s chest began to grow into a cold lump.

“I’m so sorry, Steve,” she’d said, eyes bright with tears. “I just—Believe me, I wish I could return the feeling, but—I just,” she’d rolled her eyes at herself then, sniffling. “There’s someone else. I’ve met someone, and I think he might be it, Steve. I think he might be my person.” She’d looked down with the type of smile Steve had never seen before at a bracelet wrapped around her hand.

“Oh,” he’d breathed out, taking a step back. His heart filled with sadness and longing so intense for a second that he’d had to blink up at the ceiling for a second. Then, he looked down at Peggy, her soft smile and bright eyes, and couldn’t find it in himself to be upset at her happiness. “Hey, tell me about him?”

He knew he’d made the right choice when her smile widened, and she immediately started on story after story on her man. Steve hoped Daniel Sousa knew how fucking lucky he was to have a girl like Peggy.

It wasn’t until much later, lying in bed and still unable to sleep after all this time, that he let his mind voice what he had been worrying about for the last few years. He’d almost had the same thought before but had pushed it down viciously. The truth, however, was starting to solidify the more time passed. Sam had told him these things took time, that he just had to give himself space to get over it, to move on, to get to love someone again. Five years later, alone in a flat east of the Thames, Steve can’t help but ask himself: what if time doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do? What if nothing ever compares to what he had?

***

And because Steve’s timing is always so fucking great, once he begins to wonder these thoughts to himself, what little ground is left beneath his feet comes crumbling down. He’s out on a run on a Sunday morning, feet slapping against the damp pavement, when his phone vibrates with a notification. Then another. And another. And a whole barrage of them that annoy him enough to stop at a bench and check.

Bucky: Don’t look at the news, Stevie.

Sam: hey dude call me when you get this

Sam: Steve. It’s important.

Sam: Steve, for real. Call me. Don’t—don’t check the news okay.

Bucky: Steve, I swear to God. Call.

Bucky: I’m sorry, man.

They should have never told Steve not to check the news, they know him, which is why that’s the very first thing he does. Later, he’ll think it’s good luck that he stopped by that bench because somehow he ends up collapsing onto it like his legs have been taken out from underneath him at the knees. He hasn’t had a panic attack in quite a while, it feels like when he was very little and his asthma was very bad, but his chest tightens and his lungs feel too big for his ribs. An elderly woman walking her dog slows down in front of him, he knows this in a peripheral way, and asks if he’s all right. He doesn’t know what his response is, knows only the words blurred in front of his eyes, but in a short time he’s left alone again.

_Tony Stark, notable arms manufacturer, has been reported missing in Afghanistan. A Stark Industries spokesman has informed members of the press that Mister Stark had just finished a demonstration of his newest invention, the Jericho missile, when the convoy assigned to protect him was ambushed. Lieutenant Colonel James Rhodes, a very good friend of the inventor, was taken in for medical care suffering non-lethal gunshot wounds. The service members tasked with Mister Stark’s protection unfortunately did not survive. No signs of Mister Stark’s survival have been found, but Stark Industries remains hopeful of his status as no body has been recovered. Obadiah Stane has—_

_No body has been recovered, _Steve reads the same sentence over and over again. Wills his brain to believe that maybe Tony might be alive. Somewhere. Wishes that he were home, with his friends who know him and his love for the other man, so that he could feel a support system when it feels like his whole world is crumbling down around him again.

As if on cue, as if he can sense it, Steve’s phone starts vibrating in his hand. Bucky and Sam’s faces stare back at him. The tears he’d been holding in for the last couple of minutes stream down his face, and his throat tightens as he swipes his thumb over the screen to answer the call.

“Buck?” His voice doesn’t sound like his own. It’s small and scared like it hasn’t been since he was a little twig of a boy getting beat into the ground.

***

Being back in Brooklyn feels weird, even three years after his comeback, even though Steve desperately wishes it didn’t. Going out on his morning runs feels different now without the foggy, balmy air he had grown accustomed to in the last few years. The first year back, he’d had to remind himself every morning that his routine had undergone a change. He wouldn’t find the foggy air of London anymore, he wouldn’t go out and meet Peggy for an early morning coffee or get to the gallery or go down to the pub every other afternoon hoping to catch a glimpse at the news he doesn’t allow himself to seek anymore.

Now, there are occasional morning coffees with either Sam or Bucky. There’s lunches with Maria and Natasha whom he met at the gallery the first week he was back. There’s bar runs he’s not really interested in all that much, late night runs and afternoons sketching at the park. There’s avoiding Times Square like the plague because at least one of those giant screens will have _his_ face on it at all times. There’s avoiding a certain part of Central Park, not stepping foot into Manhattan unless he has to, avoiding the Manhattan bridge at all costs… It feels as though he’s walking on eggshells half the time, but the other half… God. The rest of the time it feels as though he’s getting his first breath of air after being under water for too long.

Steve loves his friends, he really does, but being around them too much gets the wound in his heart bleeding like nothing else can. Sam and Bucky are perfect for each other, they had been from the very beginning, but seeing them happy and in love the way they look across from him at the booth on their weekly dinner makes him feel hollow inside. The space next to him feels as though it contains a ghost he never can ignore, and despite the fact that he had tried to fill it a couple of times in the past he has never found a suitable replacement. And maybe that’s where the problem is, that he’s trying to find a replacement of something that was too good, too pure, to ever get back. He’s been looking for someone to fill that hole, as if there’s any other person in the world that had the exact shape and dimensions of the one he left behind even though he knows there isn’t.

“Stevie?” Bucky’s voice pulls him from where he was idly looking at the television. For whatever reason, they’ve got one of those gossip channels on. The text under it says something about a surprise visitor coming up later.

“Mmm? Sorry, I just… got a lot on my mind lately,” Steve offers them a weak smile that he knows they will never accept, but he doesn’t know what to say. He’s been confronted by them time and time again, and by now they should already know what he’s going to tell them. He’s trying, and most days he’s content. But that’s just it, isn’t it? He’s content, but he’s not happy. Not utterly the way he once was.

Sam and Bucky share a look, and Steve tries to not show his displeasure. He doesn’t know what it is, lately, that’s making him so angry and hollow at displays of… belonging like this. And it isn’t just with Sam and Bucky; just last week, Natasha had introduced him to her boyfriend Clint, and their easy banter had rubbed him the wrong way. His running partner, a lovely veteran woman with a no-nonsense attitude named Maria had introduced him to his wife Carol, and the same feeling had cropped up.

“Yeah, that’s kind of why we’re worried about you, actually. You’ve been spacing out on us a lot, man, you sure you’re all right?” Steve sighs, a wisp of guilt curling in his belly as he looks at Sam’s worried eyes. He knows he hasn’t been the same in a while, but… well. As he said, he’s been trying. “You know we’re here for you, right? If you need help or anything, right, Bucky?” Except Bucky isn’t paying attention. His narrowed eyes are locked on the television set that had caught Steve’s attention before. “Bucky?”

Steve turns around and his heart sinks to his stomach when he sees the face on the screen. Bucky curses quietly under his breath as he looks at the “Surprise Guest” the gossip show had been boasting about earlier. Tony Stark sits on a plush couch, his goatie is immaculately trimmed and his suit fits him like a glove; to anyone who doesn’t know him he looks poised and but together. But he’s wearing sunglasses, and he has his hands clasped between his knees in a way that, even now, Steve knows belies his anxiety. The words “broken engagement” blur in Steve’s eyes under his picture.

“Engagement?” he croaks out, turning back to his friends. Sam motions something over Steve’s shoulder, and when he turns around a ball game has replaced the image of Tony. Bucky is hunched over his phone, the frown between his eyesbrows creasing his forehead in worry as he scrolls up and down on something.

The rest of the restaurant falls silent behind Steve. Vaguely, he registers Sam asking for drinks for the table. Hears him asking if Bucky thinks this is a good idea, though he hasn’t been present enough to know what _this_ means. Hears Bucky give a reply, but can’t for the life of him know what he says, because suddenly the only thing he can see are those words. _Engaged_, Tony had been engaged and now he was not. Tony had moved on, or tried to, and now his eyes are hidden behind sunglasses the way they always were when Howard or Obie had come to visit and his knuckles were white with the force of his grasp. Steve is not idiot, he knows people change and it’s been _years_, but he has always know Tony’s tells. Always.

“Fuck,” Bucky’s whispered curse snaps him back into reality. Like one of those cartoons where the character’s soul or whatever has left their body and then get slammed back into the physical plane. That’s how he feels because he’s heard this tone of voice before from his best friend. On the night when Steve pissed away the best person he’d ever had.

Steve’s body reacts before his head does, and suddenly he has Bucky’s phone in his hands. He reads over the brief summary of his life, his recovery after his kidnapping, the ousting of Stane from SI and _god that’s one more person_, and then moves on to his engagement. Apparently, Sunset Bain had been a family friend. Steve turns the name over and over in his brain but he can’t remember ever having Tony mention her to him. They had started talking again after some sort of deal between their companies, and then had started dating. The website calls them the _it_ couple of the last year or so. Except… well, it gets ugly after that. There’s a transcript of the conversation, Tony’s words talking about dealing with abuse and gaslighting from Tiberius Stone _that rat bastard_, and seeing the same pattern with Sunset.

He talks about his struggle with substance abuse. With his recovery after Sunset had leaked a personal video of himself. He talks about his incredible support team, his closest friends whom he jokes he holds jealously. There are no pictures of Tony alone, only with the woman whom he assumes is Sunset and Steve viciously scrolls past them, but then… _then._

“Click it,” Bucky tells him seriously. He raises his eyes to his friends and sees both of them looking back at him steadily. “You need to see what he says.” Steve doesn’t think the words strange, but he will realize what they meant later. Sam and Bucky had known what Tony had said in that interview. They had known that Steve wasn’t okay, but that he wasn’t the only one.

It was the first step in a journey Steve didn’t know he would ever be able to walk again.

***

Lying alone in bed that night, he can’t help the hot tears tracking down his face. He hadn’t known that the pain he had known could get so much worse. Tony had always managed to exceed his expectations, though, so he supposes he shouldn’t be surprised about this. He had tried to convince himself that he was okay, for so long, about walking away. He had told himself that it was the right choice, that he was only hurting himself because he had known that there was nobody else for him _but _Tony, but that Tony was different. Tony was bright and loving and bubbly and smart and capable, and he would find someone else. He would move on.

That damn video had shattered all of that. That damn video now had him turning with a sort of guilt he hasn’t felt in years. He had felt the guilt of breaking Tony’s heart for years, sure, but this was different. Now, after that video, he knows he did more than that. He didn’t trust that Tony loved him equally, he thought that… what? What had he thought? That Tony would move on then that was that? That Tony would forget him? Where did Steve get off on thinking that when he knew he himself wouldn’t move on from what they had? It was such a disservice to the man Tony was, even at seventeen, and he hates himself for it.

***

_“and now?” the hostess asks, and Steve has been pleasantly surprised in an absent sort of way at how kind she has been with Tony. He thinks the other man is long overdue on some kindness. “How are you doing now?”_

_Tony looks at her with a silence, and then looks down at his hands with a sad smile Steve has never seen before. “I don’t know,” he says, and leans back into his chair as though he is surprised. “I thought Sunset was my new chance, you know, but then again I thought the same about Stone.” He chuckles ruefully at himself. “The truth is that it feels as though all my life I’ve been chasing for a high I never was able to reach. I’ve been looking, for the past… I don’t know, eight years or so, for the type… this feeling I had, once, and I haven’t been able to find it. I—I don’t think I ever will.”_

_“Have you ever been in love, Tony Stark?”_

_“Just once. I was… I was young, you know? Convinced myself when it ended that I would be okay. It’s what they always tell you, right? You’ll move on, time will do its thing, you’ll meet someone else and it’ll work out… well, what if it doesn’t, you know? What if you’re trying, but you never get over them? What if time doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do? Nobody tells you that. Everyone always assumes that you _can’t _fall in love that young, but… I did. I swear that I did, and it’s never been the same since then. I gave hi—them everything I got, it was my one and only shot, you know, and I haven’t been able to get over it.”_

_“Do you think you will?”_

_“I don’t know,” Tony looks down at his hands again, twists them, and then looks back up at the hostess. “But it ain’t looking so hot right now. Hasn’t in the past eight years.”_

***

Steve’s Ma was Catholic, and she had introduced Steve into her faith. He had never been as pious as his Mama, but he had always believed in what she had taught him. He had a Saint Christopher medallion his father had owns and a tiny cross on a necklace he carried with him all the time. He hadn’t prayed in a while, had found himself drifiting from his mother’s faith the longer his pain lasted, but from time to time he found himself believing in miracles again.

The day the strawberry blonde woman walks into the museum with Maria, he is convinced that miracles do exist. He doesn’t pay much attention to them, worried with his own tasks, and only looks up when he hears the voice from other side of the room. He turns and sees a man has joined the women, and something about the arch of his back and his hair has him narrowing his eyes on his figure. The man leans forward, shakes Maria’s hand and says something that makes her smirk, before the blonde pushes him lightly in what is clearly a friendly gesture. Steve looks back down at the tablet in his hand, but he can’t quite shake the feeling that something about the man feels familiar.

He looks back at the same time the man turns to give the room a last once-over, and feels his heart stutter in his chest. _God, baby, you look tired, _is the only thought in his head. Though he’s standing tall, a power Steve always knew he would grow into exuding from him, there are lines around his mouth and, when he takes his sunglasses off as though he can’t believe his eyes, around his eyes as well. Even there, though, across the expanse space, his eyes are unmistakable.

“Steve,” Tony mouths at him, eyes wide and disbelieving. Steve doesn’t know what his own face is doing, can’t feel anything but the rush of blood in his ears and the painful pounding in his chest, but he knows it’s _wrong_ because Tony’s mouth curls into a painful mimicry of a smile and his eyes get sad. He glances away, turns back and offers Steve a tiny wave, and then turns to walk away.

Steve won’t admit it later, hates the very thought that it ever entered his mind, but he thinks about letting him go. He thinks that maybe Tony has had enough of heartbreak and even if he had said all of that in that interview, maybe he has stopped being maudlin and has decided to try again with someone new. Steve thinks maybe he should let him go, but the most pervasive thought in his mind is _I could make you happy. _

It’s not a lie, and even though it’s taken him this long to realize it, he knows that it is nothing but the truth. He could have made him happy as a poor student at nineteen standing in a college campus. At twenty four across the globe as a starting curator. Two years ago living in a tiny apartment with his friends. He could have made him happy then, and he could do so now, if only he chose to. He chose to be better for the both of them.

He vaguely hears the sound of his tablet hitting the ground behind him as he runs out the door looking for his one and only shot.

***

Tony doesn’t forgive him right away. When he catches up with him, hand soft and hesitant on his elbow, Tony’s eyes are hidden away behind his sunglasses. He pretends as though they’re old acquaintances, as though he hadn’t done that interview where everyone who knew of them would know who he meant when he said he’d only loved once, and it burns at Steve to be on the receiving end of that cold detachment. He wants to run, then and there, but he doesn’t. he doesn’t want to ever give Tony the idea that he doesn’t want him as much as he did when they were both two stupid kids, and he’d gotten scared.

They manage to set up a date, or well not a date because Tony had been adamant that he must be _insane _to even agree to see him, but they do. Steve spends the better part of that week trying not to give himself anxiety, but more often than not he ends up calling either of his friends for advice. Sam and Bucky are, understandably, speechless when he first tells them. They haven’t even hung up when they’re suddenly knocking on his door and forcing their way in. They’re happy for him, but he knows that they’re also apprehensive of what the outcome of all of this might be.

After his fifth time calling Bucky to ask if maybe he should cancel, give Tony a clean break, his friend shows up to his apartment and hits him on the arm as hard as he can. Steve bitches about it until he sees the look Bucky is giving him, and when his friend asks him, softly, to sit down because they need to talk, Steve goes without another word.

“Listen, I’m not here to tell you how to run your life. God knows your punk ass won’t listen to me no matter how hard I try, but I need you to understand something. The first time you, when you—” Bucky gets this faraway look in his eyes, and Steve feels a knot forming in his stomach at the fear in them. “When you left him the first time was bad, Steve. Finding him… the way that I did scared the shit out of me. He was my friend, too, and even though I never picked sides I’m sure he thought that I did.”

“what happened? When you—” Steve asks softly, his hands gripping the couch cushions.

“I can’t tell you,” Bucky says with a shake of his head. “I promised him I wouldn’t, and even now I won’t. Maybe he’ll want to tell you, someday, if you make it that far but I won’t break his trust. I haven’t in all these years and I won’t start now, but… Sam is going to kill me for saying this, but I need to tell you. Stevie, you fucked up a good thing all those years ago,” Bucky says seriously.

“I know, Buck,” Steve barely gets the words out.

“You fucked up a good _person_, Steve. He was—I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone look at you the way that boy did, you know? I was _so_ happy for you because I thought, damn, Steve gets to have his person this early. He gets to be happy, and then you ran. I know your reasons were your own, and I know… I know you had to do things on your own time, but you hurt yourself with that, Steve, and you have to know I never agreed with that.”

“Yeah, I know,” Steve says hoarsly.

“But it’s not fair to hurt other people because of your own shit, you know? And that interview we saw… Tony’s been hurting for just as long, Steve, and he doesn’t even know why. That’s gotta suck, right? So if you’re going to do this, if you’re gonna… try again, you need to be sure. You can’t run away because you’re scared, Stevie, look at where that’s got you both. You’re miserable, and I—I want to trust you, I do, but I can’t let you hurt him again if you’re going to bolt every time things get tough.”

“I don’t want to. I really don’t… I just, like you said, I’ve caused him so much pain. I can’t help but think that’s all I’m going to do.”

“Do you love him?”

“More than anything,” Steve says, doesn’t say _still _but knows it’s implied. He can’t do anything but.

“Then I think you know what to do.”

***

Tony kisses him first, after their twelfth date, and then steps back and stares at him as though waiting for him to bolt. Steve is still holding his hand, and his heart twinges when Tony closes his eyes as Steve presses his lips to the palm of his hand. He does things like that, sometimes, seeks affection from Steve and then waits as though that might be the thing that sends him running. He tries not to take it personal, knows that there have been more people in Tony’s life who have hurt him, but it still hurts. There’s a new uncertainty to him that Steve finds unsettling.

They go on dates. They spend time together on either of their apartments. Tony sees Sam and Bucky again and cries softly into Bucky’s shoulder. Steve meets Pepper and Rhodey and Happy, all of him are serious and cold with him for the first few months, as well as Stephen and Bruce, who are a little warmer, and Tony’s apprentices Peter and Harley who grin at him and rib Tony affectionately. They talks about all the ways in which they have changed and those that are still the same.

It’s not easy, by any means, they both have bad days and then terrible ones. Steve’s self-doubt and guilt eat at him every time Tony hesitates, every time he steps back from affection because he gets overwhelmed. He hates the days Tony locks himself in his lab or uses Pepper as an excuse to not see Steve. There are days when he wonders if this had been the right choice, if he could truly make Tony happy, but then the other man will do something. Small things, like the post-its he’s so fond of leaving all over Tony’s apartment or the snaps he sends of Peter and Harley and Dummy. He would grab hold of Steve’s pinky when they go out to eat or look at him with those eyes and smile that haven’t changed at all from the boy he fell so madly in love with and Steve will breathe.

But he knows that Tony isn’t okay. They don’t have sex until their fourth month of trying, and though Steve has never lent any credence to the gossips about promniscuity, he remembers how good they were together. He remembers Tony’s body, the ways it reacted to his touch, and he can’t help but miss him. He doesn’t want to push him, and he doesn’t think he has a right to ask, so he lets Tony set the pace. Gives him his time and hopes Tony isn’t regretting them.

The first time it happens, Steve turns around in the middle of the night and gets woken up by the cold sheets where a body should be. He springs up into a seating position and taps the bed with his hand to make sure there really isn’t anyone there. His heart starts pounding with worry, worst case scenarios popping into his head, and then he hears the sniffling. His world comes to a screeching halt and then his heart breaks when he spots Tony’s bedhead over his side of the bed.

He gets out of bed, nudity be damned, and rounds the corner of it to sit next to his lover. Tony doesn’t flinch away, thank God, but his sniffling turns to sobbing and he curls tighter into himself. Steve’s eyes sting as he looks at him, his heart constricting, but he doesn’t let himself cry. Tony needs him to be strong right now and Steve would do anything for him.

“Baby?” He touches Tony’s knees with the pads of his fingers, and though he doesn’t say anything, Tony angles his body in his direction. “Sweetheart? Can you tell me what’s wrong?”

“I’m sorry,” is barely audible behind his knees.

“Nothing to be sorry for, Tony. What can—Is there anything I can do?”

Tony shakes his head but he scoots closer to him. Steve hesitantly puts his arm around his shoulders, and Tony buries his head under it. He doesn’t stop sobbing, and Steve is afraid at the way he sounds like he _can’t_ but he doesn’t want to push him. The only thing he can do is hold him close and pray he makes him feel safe.

After what feels like forever, Tony’s arm snakes around his waist. Steve presses kisses into his hair and wishes he didn’t feel so useless.

“Steve?” Tony asks quietly, and Steve hums to let him know he’s listening. “I don’t—I think I’m not okay.” Tony’s breath shutters in his chest, and Steve tightens his arms around him. He bites his tongue to keep from apologizing, knows that it won’t do any good to either of them, and brings him closer.

“It’s okay, baby. We’ll figure it out.”

***

They go to Sam for advice, and the very first thing his friend does is hug them both tightly. He especially gives a tight embrace to Tony who closes his eyes and bites his lip to keep from crying. Once they’ve calmed down, and Steve and Tony explain what has been going on, Sam refers them to a colleague of his by the name of Phil Coulson whom he promises will keep Tony’s name under wraps. He makes sure to tell them that if Coulson isn’t a good fit then he will help them find someone else.

It feels as though it’s the first struck of luck for them in a long while because Phil Coulson turns out to be exactly who they need. He’s a no-nonsense type of guy that Steve feels as though will set Tony on edge, but he’s also soft-spoken and kind that allows Tony to relax. He meets with them separately at first, and every time Tony has to go in alone Steve worries and paces.

After a while, they have joint sessions and while Steve had thought his independent sessions were hard, he wasn’t prepared for how grueling the joint ones are. He’s always left feeling unsure and shaky after their time with Coulson. He thinks they aren’t working, at first, because sure he shouldn’t be feeling this uncertain and afraid, but he starts changing his behavior. Starts identifying patterns in his thought process and the way he acts around his friends and his lover that he now knows are unhealthy.

The hardest session, by far, is the day they talk about the way Tony had reacted the first time they made love. The reason why they were talking to Coulson to start with. He knows Tony and Coulson had agreed that he was ready, even though it had been months since they began and Steve had thought it was just something that he wouldn’t get to know about. He was wrong, though, and he’s incredibly nervous as he sits next to his partner and Tony holds his hand.

The beginning was easy, Coulson always made sure to put them at ease and remind them of their love for one another. That helps. It might be the only thing that does when Coulson turns the conversation to that night. Tony fidgets next to him, flexes his fingers, but then holds Steve’s hand tighter in his.

“Steve? That night, how did you feel when you woke up and Tony wasn’t next to you?”

“I was afraid,” steve says without hesitating. He’s never going to forget the panic that coursed through him at finding Tony gone. “I thought something had happened or—” he bites his lip and looks down at his feet. Tony goes still next to him and it takes everything in Steve not to turn to comfort him.

“Or?” Coulson prompts, voice soft and even. The panic ebs.

“Or that you’d left. I thought maybe you’d realized you made a mistake taking me back; I thought maybe that’s why you’d waited so long for us to… do that.”

Tony makes a wounded sort of noise next to him, but doesn’t say anything. Steve can feel them sharing a glance over his head.

“And when you realized that hadn’t happened?”

“I was relieved, for a second. I was so, so grateful that you hadn’t left because… because I didn’t know what I would do if I lost you again, but… when I saw you. When—the way you were crying broke my heart. I didn’t know why, I didn’t know if it was something I’d done, if I had hurt you somehow… I didn’t know how to help. I felt useless, I felt useless to _you _and I didn’t want to feel like that ever again. I love you; I love you so much and not being able to help you hurts,” Steve turns, tears in his eyes, to look at Tony.

“Tony?” Coulson prompts after they’d composed themselves. Tony’s thumb tracing under Steve’s eyes to wipe away his tears.

“I woke up and you were still sleeping,” Tony begins in a whisper, voice shaking. Steve kisses his knuckles and holds his hand between both of his. “I hadn’t had that, you, like that in so long, you know? But I’d pictured it, had woken up and been disappointed so many times since—since you left that—“ Tony is crying again, whole body trembling, and Steve hates it so much. He hates that the picture is starting to get so clear in his mind now. “I woke up, and you looked so beautiful, and I thought I was dreaming again. I thought that maybe I was just imagining, but you looked _real_ and when I touched you… when I touched you, you didn’t just poof out like every other time scared me. I touched you, and I couldn’t tell if it was real or not. You were there, and you looked so real, but—but I felt like if I kept looking at and it turned out that you weren’t then—I just” Tony heaves a sob, curling in on himself, and Steve throws a glance at Coulson to make sure it’s okay before he gathers Tony into his arms. “I didn’t think I could do it. Not again. If I had you, and I could touch you, and you went away again.”

Steve buries his face into Tony’s soft hair, holds him tight with his ear pressed against his chest, and wills him to believe him. That he is there. That he loves him more than anything. That he will never leave him again. That he shouldn’t have the first time.

***

Steve wakes up to kisses being placed all over his recent freckles. It’s the same way he’s woken up every summer for the last three years of his marriage and he can’t help the silly grin that spreads across his face. The man on top of him laughs and presses open mouthed kisses down his throat. Steve groans and rolls over, pinning the body of his husband over his as he blinks his eyes open.

Tony is beautiful in the mornings. He’s gorgeous any time of day, but he’s especially beautiful when he’s the first thing Steve sees. His curly soft hair is tousled and the morning light filtering into their room makes his eyes go molten and bright. His lab-roughened hands come up from between the sheets and grab hold of Steve’s face.

Steve can’t help the smile he gives him before he leans down to kiss him, rough and fiercely like every morning they’ve woken up together, and Tony’s hands weave into his hair. Morning breath be damned, Steve deepens the kiss and presses closer to his husband. God, _husband_, it’s been three years and he’s still not used to it. He’s Mr. Stark-Rogers as of three years ago and for the rest of his life. Sometimes he still can’t believe Tony ever took him back.

“Good morning, doll,” Steve says when they pull apart, his Tony smile still firmly on his face.

“Good morning, beloved,” Tony says back, like every morning, his fingers still tangled in his hair. And then, like always, he presses his mouth against Steve’s and asks, “you love me, real?”

“Real,” Steve breathes back.

_Always had._

_Always will. _


End file.
